I am very excited to see that the first in a series of articles I am writing for Security Week has been published. I would love to hear what you think.

The OODA loop is a well established concept often used in security which originated in the military. OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

OODA is an iterative process because after each action you need to observe your results and any new opposing action. The idea is that if you can consistently get to the action faster than your opponent you can beat them. It is typically described using an airplane dogfight analogy – airplanes try to turn more quickly and sharply than their opponent in order to get off a shot. But, as you turn faster and faster the g-forces build and at this point the ever faster OODA loop is more like a centrifuge crushing us. We need to break out of the loop and find a new way to play the security game.

According to this Forbs article, DHS is going to start checking your cards at border entry points. They are doing this to find pre-paid / stored value cards which need to be declared like you would cash (you would, right?).

My worry is that this may allow them to capture account numbers and other information from any other cards that they swipe while checking to see which cards meet the criteria.